CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jack was hunched over some paperwork on his desk, a coffee-mug sitting empty at his elbow. The office was dark but for his desk-lamp, which threw oversized shadows up against the brick wall.

Ianto knocked on the door and entered, careful to be as unobtrusive as possible. "Coffee," he said, swapping the empty cup with the full one in his hand.

"Thanks," Jack muttered, not looking up as he scrawled a signature on the bottom of an expenses form.

"Maybe you should take a break?" Ianto suggested tentatively.

"Can't," Jack said distractedly, picking up another sheet from the pile, holding his pen in his mouth as he scanned the sheet.

"Just for an hour?" Ianto reached out and rested a hand on Jack's shoulder, noting absently how tense his neck was.

"Busy," Jack mumbled around the biro in his mouth, although he did cover Ianto's hand with his own and give it a brief squeeze.

"It's not like you to want to work," Ianto said, trying to sound casual. Are you okay?

Jack tipped his head up to look at Ianto, taking the pen out of his mouth and half-smiling, the edges of his mouth turning up slightly and his eyes crinkling with soft blue amusement. "There's a lot of stuff to go through," he said. "I want to get up to date." I'm fine. I just need to get back in control, get back to work.

Ianto smiled back, wondering when they started having conversations without actually having conversations. "I'll be around if you need me."

"I won't be much longer," Jack said. "Have the others gone home?"

"Not yet." Ianto checked his watch with a smart twist of the wrist. "It's only half six."

"I thought Gwen and Rhys were going out tonight?" Jack said, looking back down at his desk. "She was talking about that new French place in the centre."

"Their reservation's for eight-fifteen," Ianto explained. "She'll probably head off in a bit."

"What about the others?" Jack scribbled on another signature.

"They're going to see a film—" Ianto said, and before Jack could open his mouth added, "—with their phones set to vibrate."

"So we're Hub-sitting tonight, then?"

"Yup."

"Can we—?"

"Later."

"So that's a yes?"

"Maybe." Ianto patted Jack's head, smiling as Jack snagged his wrist and kissed the palm. "I'll bring the stopwatch."

"Lots of things you can do with a stopwatch," Jack agreed, tipping his head back again to grin lasciviously up at Ianto.

Ianto kissed him, upside-down and messy, and made a hurried exit before he got roped into anything he might regret.

-T-

Ianto's eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom as he stepped through the heavy iron door to the vaults. He shivered involuntarily at the cool, clammy air, and made a mental note to get hold of a heater sometime before the winter.

The Doctor was propped against the back wall of his cell, knees drawn up under his chin and his eyes vacant, staring off into the middle distance.

Ianto cleared his throat, awkwardly straightening his tie with one hand and tugging on the bottom of his suit jacket with his other.

The Doctor looked up, startled, quickly covering his surprise with a mad grin. "Ianto!" he greeted him in delight. "I was beginning to think that you'd all forgotten me."

Ianto rolled his eyes. "No, sir. I was working."

The Doctor let his feet slide across the floor, his knees lowering. "What is it exactly that you do?"

Ianto restrained the urge to say 'Jack', and instead said evasively, "A bit of everything, really."

"Jack said that you make the coffee," the Doctor said, fixing Ianto with a deceptively casual look. Ianto knew that he was probing, trying to figure him out. He himself did the same thing.

Ianto kept his face carefully blank, not letting the time-lord see how much that dismissive job description stung. "That's one of my duties, yes," he said.

"Do you do tea, too?" the Doctor asked hopefully.

"I'll bring one down right away," Ianto said, already turning to leave.

"I was wondering if I could come up with you…?" The Doctor didn't meet Ianto's eyes; his fingers were playing over his thigh, long digits pattering to and fro as he watched them with apparent fascination.

Ianto raised an eyebrow. "That would involve letting you out of your cell, sir," he reminded the Doctor. "That's against protocol."

The Doctor's fingers stilled. "You broke protocol with Lisa."

Ianto swallowed, only just remembering to keep his mask in position. "Not on this occasion," he said, willing his voice to stay impassive. To show emotion is to show weakness, he reminded himself, his fingers convulsively curling around the hem of his suit jacket.

The Doctor shrugged, tipping his head back and staring up at the ceiling. "I guess Jack wants me out of sight," he said quietly, his eyes half-closed and dark.

"That isn't my place to comment on, sir," Ianto said stiffly. "Now, if you don't mind, I have a job to do." He headed back out through the door again, once more feeling as if he had been through an intense interrogation. He left the door open, however; even the Doctor didn't deserve to be shut away any more than he already was.

"Milk and two sugars, please!" the Doctor called after him, his voice echoing emptily down the corridor.

Janet uttered a throaty moan, dangerous and low.

-T-

Ianto breathed out a sigh as he reached his workstation, picking up the kettle, filling it with water and setting it to boil.

Just as he was picking out a mug – there only seemed to be pink ones at the moment – he felt two arms snake around his waist, pulling him flush against a muscled body.

"Jack…" he warned.

Jack chuckled, the vibrations tingling through Ianto's body, and rested his chin on Ianto's shoulder. "What?" he asked innocently.

"I said later," Ianto said, dropping a teabag into the only not obscenely-Barbie-pink mug that seemed to be in the cupboard.

"I say now," Jack replied, the mischief evident in his voice.

"Later," Ianto reiterated, trying to ignore the little voice whispering dirty thoughts into his ear.

Jack turned his head and planted a kiss beneath Ianto's ear. "Please?" he asked, his warm breath tickling Ianto's neck.

"The others are still here," Ianto said.

"No they're not," Jack said, sounding smug. "I sent them all home just now."

Ianto rolled his eyes. "You're insatiable."

"C'mon…" Jack wheedled. "It's been ages."

Ianto switched off the kettle. "Fine," he said, letting a wicked smile creep onto his face. The little voice's whisperings grew filthier, and Ianto shivered slightly at some of the suggestions.

Jack grinned brightly, his eyes dark, and tugged Ianto, by the tie, up to his office.

-T-

Jack waited for Ianto to drift off before he carefully slid himself out from between the sheets and collected his clothes from where they lay scattered across the floor.

He was missing a button, Jack noted as he quickly did his shirt up. Better get Ianto to sew that back on tomorrow. After all, it is his fault I lost it.

"Jack?" Ianto asked sleepily, his eyes half-open and his cheeks flushed, his hair testament to their antics of the past hours.

"Just need to check something," Jack said casually, bending down to lace up his boots. "Won't be long."

"Rift?"

"No – doesn't matter. Go back to sleep." Jack gave him a smile.

Ianto frowned at him, still dozy, not quite escaped from the muggy warmth of dreams. "Why are you dressed?"

Jack shrugged, trying to come up with an excuse. "That cat's been hanging around the water tower again."

"The tabby?"

"Yeah. Pusska."

"Pusska?" Ianto was awake enough to raise an eyebrow, his expression a mix of disapproval and amusement.

"It's on her collar," Jack said defensively. His hands were on the ladder, ready to climb up as soon as the conversation was over.

"Mmm," Ianto said, rubbing his face with a hand. "Can't it wait 'til morning?"

"No, sorry."

"Whatever." Ianto's eyes were already closed, his breathing evening out once more.

-T-

"Jack," the Doctor said coolly, his expression guarded. "Finally decided to come visit?"

"Do you want to get out of here?" Jack asked, ignoring the Doctor's question. His arms were folded across his chest, his stance defensive. Before the Doctor could reply, he asked, "Do you want to get back to travelling the stars?"

"What sort of question is that?" the Doctor frowned at him. "Jack, what's wrong?"

Jack looked away, biting his lip. His heart was thumping in his chest.

"Jack. Talk to me."

Jack suddenly locked gazes with the Doctor, feeling his mouth go dry as he saw the tumult of emotions storming in the time-lord's eyes. "Did you kill Ianto?"

The Doctor swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. His eyes didn't leave Jack's. "Yes."

Jack felt something in his heart snap. "Why?" he whispered, barely noticing as his voice cracked.

"I had no choice."

"What?"

The Doctor looked down, his face expressionless. "It wasn't intentional. It was give them the technology or let the last of their race die."

"I don't under—"

"The technology would infect a person with a virus set to copy their DNA. The DNA would be used to make a … long-term form for the aliens, so that they didn't have to constantly shape-shift all the time." The Doctor tugged at his earlobe, clearly uncomfortable with what he was telling. "They only wanted to experience life properly."

"Then why not an animal – why a human?" Jack asked. Why Ianto?

The Doctor shrugged. "Sentience? Compatibility? I don't know."

Jack felt a slight glimmer of hope rekindle in his chest. "So you didn't kill him on purpose?"

"No – just let me explain. In copying the DNA, the virus also be attacking it. It would seem that the person has leukaemia," the Doctor said. "Only… I didn't think that it would kill anybody. They promised that they'd cure the leukaemia before the person even noticed."

"Then why—"

"They were attacked. By the rogues. The rogues stole the technology."

"Only the rogues weren't bound to the promise," Jack said slowly, understanding beginning to dawn. "They didn't cure them."

"I'm sorry, Jack. It's my fault. I should have seen this coming," the Doctor said softly. "I should have told you before."

"Why didn't you?"

The Doctor turned away, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Guilt, I guess. Some lingering hope that maybe this wasn't connected."

"But it is."

"It is," the Doctor confirmed, still not facing Jack. "And I need to get out. I need to stop it from going any further."

Jack narrowed his eyes at the time-lord's back. "I can let you out for an hour," he said. "No longer. And no using the TARDIS."

"Agreed," the Doctor said instantly, swivelling round on his heel and fixing Jack with an intense look.

Ianto's gonna kill me for this… Jack thought morosely as he aimed his Vortex Manipulator at the cell front. A mechanism clicked somewhere in the ceiling, and the cell front shuddered.

The Doctor pushed it away, letting it crash to the floor, and grabbed his coat from the hook beside the cell. "Well, then," he said brightly. "Let's get down to business."

"Where's Donna?" the Doctor asked, not breaking his stride as they hurried through the veritable maze of tunnels and chambers in the lower levels of the Hub.

Jack didn't glance around at him as he replied, "At a film," his tone short and clipped.

"And the TARDIS?"

"Locked away." Jack turned down at side-passage, deftly depressing a press-stone cleverly concealed in a door-arch. "Toshiko's fixed a temporal/spatial lock on her, too, to keep her from wandering."

"She wouldn't leave without me."

"Hmm."

"She wouldn't," the Doctor insisted, blinking as bright light flooded the corridor they were walking down. "What—?"

"Sorry," Jack apologised, flashing a quick grin in the Doctor's direction, his teeth gleaming white. "The automatic systems seem to be a bit slow at the moment."

"No problem," the Doctor said, still blinking in an attempt to rid his vision of the dancing blue circles. "How deep does this place go?"

Jack chuckled, and gestured to a doorway that the Doctor hadn't noticed before. "I'm not entirely certain – there are tunnels leading up to Scotland and London, and others that the plans don't show."

"You would have thought that you'd at least make sure you knew what was in your base," the Doctor observed. He peered up the dark stairwell, the gloom a stark contrast to the bright lights of the corridor. "I bet you haven't even finished going through all the Archives, yet."

"That's Ianto's job," Jack said with a wry smile, following the Doctor up the steps.

"He does a lot, doesn't he?" The Doctor carefully slid the stunner out of his coat pocket, sliding his fingers up the slim metal shaft to flip the 'on' switch. Sorry, Jack, he thought as he whirled around and deftly cracked Jack over the head with the electric rod.

Jack crumpled, his eyes rolling back in their sockets and his mouth sagging open into an 'o' of surprise as he tumbled back down the stairs.

The Doctor leapt down the steps, shoving the stunner back in his pocket, to carefully take the immortal's pulse. He was relieved to find it steady and strong. "Don't like to use that thing," he said, rooting around in his other pocket for the short-range teleporter. "Easier than carrying you all the way up there without waking your Mr. Jones," he informed the prone Jack. "Sorry about this all, but it is rather necessary."

"What d'you mean, 'necessary'?" a cold voice demanded from behind him, accompanied by the click of a gun being taken off the safety-latch.

The Doctor froze, slowly swivelling around to face a white-faced Ianto Jones, pointing a SIG P228 semi-automatic straight between his eyes.

"Hands up where I can see them," Ianto instructed, his voice brittle. His eyes were over-bright in his pale face, the lighting bestowing upon him a chill pallor. Dressed in only a pair of slacks and a loose white t-shirt that the Doctor suspected was Jack's, the Welshman presented a rather unthreatening appearance.

"I'm only trying to help—"

"Pull the other one," Ianto snapped, his aim steady. "Tell me exactly what you've done to Jack, and how to wake him up again. And then tell me how you got out of your cell."

The Doctor licked his lips, hyper-aware of how close the gun was to his face. "Put the gun down and we can talk—"

"Tell me."

The Doctor hesitated for a moment. Dare he try bargaining with the young man? The expression on Ianto's face told him that he'd be a fool to try. "I only stunned him, and he'll wake up in a couple of hours," he said, keeping eye-contact with Ianto. He swallowed. "As for how I got out of the cell, Jack let me—"

Ianto's eyes flashed, and the Doctor knew that he'd made a mistake. Ianto took a step closer, the gun almost pressing into the Doctor's forehead. One twitch of Ianto's trigger-finger and—

"One twitch of my finger and your brains will be splattered all across the wall," Ianto growled. He readjusted his grip on the gun slightly. "And believe me – it'd be worth the clean-up just to see if that so-called 'regeneration' process I've read about comes into effect when your brains are contributing to our interior design."

"Understood," the Doctor said, trying not to think about how much that would have to sting. "What—"

"Why did you stun Jack?"

The Doctor sighed. "I need to fix this," he said quietly. "I need to get in contact with the aliens and fix this."

"How d'you intend to do that?" Ianto's eyes were dark with barely-suppressed fury.

"Let me go and you'll see," the Doctor tried.

"No deal," Ianto said. His inflection was like a shower of ice crystals, probing and stabbing and cold. "You tell me exactly what's going on or…" he raised his eyebrows, his intent clear in his eyes, "…bang."

The Doctor's gaze flicked to the red light above Ianto's head, at the very rise of the arch. It was flickering slightly, the bulb clearly beginning to fail. Shows how long it's been, he thought.

"Now," Ianto said, "tell me what's happening."

"I… The aliens had the technology stolen from them," the Doctor said in a rush, almost falling over his words. "The technology's being used to steal DNA."

Ianto narrowed his eyes, clearly unconvinced. "I think you'd better show me exactly what you mean to do," he said, not lowering his gun an inch. "Try anything funny…and I'll shoot."

"Got it," the Doctor said. "Now, if you wouldn't mind putting away that gun—"

"No." Ianto didn't bat an eyelid. "This gun stays aimed on your head. Now get moving."

The Doctor considered refusing to move, but decided that it really wasn't worth it. "Right away, then," he said briskly, taking a step towards the stairs. The gun didn't move. "Seriously, that gun is really off-putting," the Doctor tried again.

"Shut up and start walking," Ianto said, his jaw clenched and his eyes glittering. "I don't want to have to warn you again."

The Doctor nodded – keeping his movements slow as to not startle the Torchwood agent – and started up the stairs, hands still held up by his ears.

-T-

Jack woke up to see the Doctor and Ianto vanish up the staircase, Ianto holding the time-lord at gun-point. He frowned. What the—?

Oh. He remembered now. He sat up and put a hand to his head; luckily, he had escaped with only a rather startled shock of hair. "Great," he muttered. "My day is doing just wonderful."

He staggered to his feet, his vision blurring and spinning rather alarmingly. He felt sick to his stomach; what had the Doctor used on him? Some sort of stunning device, he concluded, and a powerful one at that. He didn't remember dying, however, which was some relief. At least the Doctor hadn't completely lost it.

Following them up the spiral staircase, Jack couldn't help but try to listen in on their conversation. Or rather, the lack of it.

"So…" the Doctor was saying; Jack could hear the underlying nervousness in his tone. "What exactly are you planning on making me do?"

"You said you knew how to fix it."

"Yes, but…what if it goes wrong?"

A pause. "Then we'll just have to try something else," Ianto said in resignation.

The Doctor chuckled. "I think I like you, Ianto Jones."

"The feeling isn't mutual."

"I had guessed that, actu—"

"Through here," Ianto interrupted. There came the sound of a door opening, and Jack assumed they were entering the main basin of the Hub. He stopped, listening for the close of the door.

Which never came.

Instead, he heard a buzzing sound and a yell of pain; he raced up the last few steps three at a time, to see the Doctor carefully lowering a stunned Ianto to the floor. The semi-automatic clattered to the floor, firing as it fell. A glass panel shattered, somewhere in the shadows; the Doctor jumped and leapt away from Ianto as if stung.

Jack removed his webley from its holster and aimed it at the Doctor's chest. "Hands up!" he ordered, his heart pounding. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, the voice in his head chanted. You don't point guns at the Doctor – never point guns at the Doctor.

Tough luck, Jack thought, fury clouding his vision.

"Jack?" the Doctor looked startled, holding his hands up by his head and eyeing the gun warily. "I know this looks bad, but just let me explain—"

"I trusted you," Jack said, almost shaking with anger, though he kept his gun-arm steady. "I gave you one last chance."

"And I mucked that up, I know, and I'm sorry, but—"

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't shoot." Jack felt hollow. He barely recognised the gangly man standing in front of him; this wasn't the Doctor. It couldn't be. The Doctor wouldn't do this. He wouldn't—

"I know how to fix this."

"So do I," Jack spat. "This bullet, your head. Simple."

"Nonononononono – let me explain!" The Doctor had his hands up still, although they were more placating than wary now.

"You lied to me. Why should I trust you?"

"You'll try to stop me if I do this," the Doctor said softly. "But I have to do this. There's no other choice."

"Tell me. And if you lie…" Jack let it trail off, his meaning clear.

The Doctor swallowed, his eyes darting from the gun to Jack's face. "This was never meant to happen," he said. "This wasn't in the timelines. I have to remove it."

"What do you mean?"

"I need to remove your memories. Then go back to 1652 and change what happened."

"That's meddling with the timelines," Jack said. He shook his head. "I can't let you do that."

"You have to."

"I can't," Jack said.

"You have to," the Doctor repeated. "I know what I'm doing. Trust me."

"Why should I?" Jack asked, lowering his gun. "Tell me, Doctor. What am I supposed to do?"

"Let me do what needs to be done. Sit with Ianto until he wakes up, do whatever you two do, and let me do what I have to."

"If you try anything…" Jack warned, holstering his webley, "I won't hesitate to shoot you."

The Doctor regarded Jack with sad eyes. "Does it always have to involve guns, Jack?"

"You didn't seem so averse to that stunner, yourself." Jack crouched down to check Ianto's pulse, relieved to find it sure and steady. He stroked Ianto's cheek, willing him to wake up. C'mon, Ianto, it's just a stunner… Wake up already…

"He'll wake up in a couple of hours," the Doctor said.

"If you've hurt him—"

"I haven't hurt him," the Doctor snapped impatiently. "Now, are you going to let me get on with this or keep wasting time?"

Jack took a deep breath, clearly steeling himself. "Okay. Do it."

The Doctor held out his hand, already rooting around in his pocket for his sonic screwdriver.

"What?" Jack asked, looking confused.

"Vortex Manipulator."

"I'm not—" Jack broke off, and with a resigned sigh took off the leather wristband and handed it over. "I hope you know what you're doing."

-T-

Light. Bright light. Burning. Burning his eyes, stabbing at his brain. Pain – such pain. The Doctor gasped, covering his eyes with his hands, to no avail.

"I've changed time," he breathed, in dreadful realisation. "I've done it."

And the fantastic light grabbed him and swept him away in a current of confusion and chaos. White fire licked at his body, destroying him from the inside-out. The pain—

And then two arms were holding him securely, and a familiar American-accented voice was saying, "It's okay, Doc – I've got you."

The Doctor closed his eyes, the tide of burning light fading away as the immortal carried him out of the ripping-apart of existence itself.

-T-

"What happens now?" Jack asks. If the Doctor didn't know him better, he would have thought that Jack was scared. But the great Captain Jack Harkness doesn't get scared. Not ever.

The Doctor shrugged, time still rippling all around him, golden streaks still entwined around his hands and arms, caressing his fingers, threatening to burn. "I guess I need to fix it so that you won't remember it. So that it'll never have existed." He smiled, though he knew that it was bitter. "After all, memories are the key to existence."

"That's not always the case," Jack argued, his eyes following the Doctor's hands, hypnotised by the shimmering coils. "You can't take our memories, Doctor. You can't. You…"

The Doctor frowned at him. "Jack, snap out of it."

Jack was still staring at the impossible threads of fire, his face starting to slacken.

"Jack!"

Jack blinked and shook his head. "Sorry," he said, looking embarrassed. "It's just so…"

"Time's still on the brink of falling apart, Jack," the Doctor said. "We can't leave it teetering on the brink like this."

Jack's brows drew together in a frown. "That reminds me – how exactly did you change time?"

The Doctor held up a hand, watching the strands of white-gold flame winding around his fore-arms like snakes. "I think that's better left secret," he said, knowing that he sounded enigmatic and mysterious, and getting a slight kick out of it.

Jack clearly didn't believe him, but refrained from pushing. "You still can't take our memories," he said. He nodded over at where he had laid Ianto on the couch, the Welshman still out cold. "I don't want to lose what I've got."

"You won't," the Doctor said, surprised. "I'm only taking away the past few— Oh. I see." The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, momentarily forgetting about the gold. He looked back at Jack to see the Captain staring at him in part fascination, part horror. "What?"

Jack nodded at him. "You're glowing, Doctor. Glowing."

"Am I?" The Doctor touched his hair. It seemed just the same as normal.

Then he felt it. That whisper in his mind. The sensual caress that remained entirely mental. "Oh," he whispered, entranced.

Do it.

"Do what?" the Doctor asked. Painpleasurepainpleasureburningstoppleasestop—

The Doctor gasped, his senses flooding with the entirety of the fire. Jack's voice, faint and distant: "Do … tor? Wha … s … app … nin'?"

"Oh," the Doctor said again, as all of time was displayed to him in its full glory, ripping his mind into infinite pieces and scattering them throughout his consciousness. "I understand now."

"You … derstand … at?"

"All of it." The Doctor closed his eyes, then opened them again, now able to see Jack's terrified face staring at him and begging him to explain, to make things alright again. "I have to fix it."

"How? Doctor?"

"Sorry, Jack." The Doctor held up a hand and golden light streamed from his palm to hit Jack square in the face and tumble him backwards onto the couch by Ianto; then they both were swept up in a tidal wave of fire and burning and light, being hurtled into something new and being created at that very second.

Time itself was being rewritten.

And the Doctor threw back his head, lifted his arms above his head and laughed, the wind and flames whirling the sound away and amplifying it so that he could hear it from every direction, from every time. Laughing throughout infinity.

Exhilarated, the Doctor laughed and laughed.

-T-

Time was back in its usual flux, the Doctor noted as he stealthily slipped down the ladder into Jack's room beneath his office. Only the memories to remove, then.

Jack's voice echoed in his head

The Doctor gazed sadly at the sleeping men in front of him. "I'm really, really sorry about this," he told them, even though he knew that they couldn't hear him. "I've done some pretty bad things in my time, but this has to rank up with the worst of them."

Jack had his head tucked in against Ianto's neck, his hand splayed possessively over the younger man's chest. Ianto's face looked relaxed and open in his sleep, his fingers wound through Jack's hair and his cheeks flushed pink. He looked so young, almost angelic; more importantly, he looked in love. How could the Doctor take that from him?

The Doctor tasted bitter regret in his mouth, the guilt weighing down his tongue. Before he could break his resolve, he retrieved the blue vial from his jacket pocket and held it up to the light falling in through the manhole. "Advanced version of your retcon," he said softly. "It'll rewrite your memories of the last couple of months." He smiled bitterly. "What wouldn't I give for it to work on me, too. I never wanted anyone to get hurt. I…I don't know what I wanted. I wanted to help them, I guess. They're the last of their race, too." His smile twisted and faded. "Look what happened. Or rather, what didn't happen." He grimaced. "That's one hell of a paradox I've created. There's going to be consequences, I know. And I'm sorry, but I've given you longer – I've given you more. And I've taken more," he admitted in a low voice. "I'm sorry."

Ianto mumbled something in his sleep, his fingers tightening reflexively in Jack's hair. The Doctor hesitated, watching for any signs of either of them waking, then carefully, almost reverently, twisted open the vial and let the pale blue gas escape; it quickly faded into the air, and the Doctor stowed the sapphire glass in his pocket once more before making his escape up the ladder and closing the manhole behind him.

Before he headed up to the Tourist Information office, the Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at the mainframe computer, quickly crashing the computer and corrupting the data on the mission logs. He had to wipe every last detail of the past two months from Torchwood; Gwen and her husband had already been wiped, as had Tosh, Owen, Martha and Donna. None of them could be allowed to remember. They couldn't be allowed to remember what didn't technically exist.

Once the door of the office closed behind him, the Doctor let out a long sigh, and walked to the rail; he leant over, staring down into the dark, watery depths beneath the walkway of Mermaid Quay. As he expected, a silver-brown mullet rose to the surface and fixed him with an inquisitive yellow eye.

"It's done," the Doctor said. He looked out across the water, to where the sun was beginning to rise; blood-coloured rays extended out across the water, bleeding into the surging blue-green and spilling everywhere, until the water was no longer distinguishable from the sky; both were a striking mixture of reds, oranges, blues and purples all blended together to form one great landscape with the burning sun as a centrepiece, a great ball of fire akin to those featured in numerous prophecies.

The fish didn't respond. When the Doctor looked down, he saw that the water was empty, devoid of anything but a shadow flickering beneath the surface, racing away across the ocean.

With a heavy heart, the Doctor turned and strode across the Plass to the TARDIS, not looking back even the once. He'd done what he had to do; his job was done. Now he – and Donna, when she awoke – had the rest of time and space to explore. Until the paradox began requesting its compensation on the universe, that was.

Until then, he had to run, and keep running. He wasn't Jack, he couldn't fight the inevitable in an attempt at happiness; he was the one who stole the happiness, who destroyed the lives. And for what?

That was an answer he was still searching for. But, in the meantime, he still had planets to save, in an attempt for the pain he knew he would bring.

For he was the Oncoming Storm. He may well have met his match in one Ianto Jones; so un-powerful it was almost comical, but with the love to turn an immortal man against his greatest friend despite the threat of a Storm.

But the Welsh were used to rain, right?

FINIS